The Little Titans
by akane47
Summary: The battle of the sexes begins early. An AU fic inspired by the "Little Rascals" movie.
1. The Football Club

Disclaimer: The city of Alexandria, VA, the original Titans and their families belong to themselves. Superman belongs to DC Comics and Ronnie's Ping-Pong ball gun to Dave Barry. "Hot gazoobies" comes from Gordon Korman. I only own the Hunter twins, Eddie Lindros, Old Pete and the plot of this story.

Technical Notes: I know that the real Gerry Bertier has a sister named Becky, but I forgot that fact and began this story with a girl named Betsy. By the time I remembered, I had grown attached to the name "Betsy," so I decided to let the character keep it. It's my story, anyway, and this way I don't feel like I'm involving an innocent person in this flight of fancy.

Author's Notes:  I'm ba-ack…

THE LITTLE TITANS

Chapter One — The Football Club

It was a hot summer day and seven-year-old Gerry Bertier was bored. He didn't want to stay indoors and read like his momma had suggested. He didn't want to play with his sister Betsy, because that meant being forced to play with her stupid dolls. He didn't even want to play Superman with his best friend, Little Julius Campbell, because both of them wanted to be Superman and it was hard trying to catch an imaginary bad guy.

"I'm bored, Julius," Gerry said, resting his elbows on his grubby knees.

Little Julius, a tall, thin, black boy, sprawled on the porch beside him. "Me, too."

"Ain't there anything fun left to do in this town?"

"We could always play football."

Gerry groaned. "That's as bad as playing Superman." He and Little Julius loved to play football, but they both wanted to be linebackers and it was hard trying to sack an imaginary quarterback.

"It don't have to be just us," Little Julius pointed out. "We could ask some of the other kids to play, too. We could form a team."

His friend's words gave Gerry an idea. "We could form a club!" he exclaimed, his face brightening. "A football club with two teams! That way, we can all play!"

"Hey, that's a great idea," the other boy said, warming to the prospect. "'Sides givin' us somethin' to do, it'll help us practice our moves."

"And we'd better practice if we want to be good enough to play in the pros when we grow up," Gerry agreed. "Who will we ask to join?"

"I can ask Jerry Harris. He's a good quarterback."

"Great," Gerry said. Like Little Julius, Jerry was black, but only the grown-ups cared about that black-white stuff. All the kids cared about was having someone to play with. "And we'll need some big kids to play linemen, too."

"How about Blue Stanton and Lewie Lastik?"

Gerry's brown eyes widened. "Will Lewie play with us? He's a _whole year_ older than we are!"

"Lewie will play if Jerry's playin'. They're pretty good friends."

"If you say so. Hey, how about the Hunter twins, Ryan and Corey?"

"Them twins who don't look alike?"

"Yeah. They run fast."

"OK, then." Little Julius nodded his approval. "And if we get them to play, maybe they can ask some of their other friends to join, too."

"Eddie Lindros!" Gerry exclaimed. "They're friends with Eddie Lindros, and I've seen him play ball. He's good." He grinned, pleased at how quickly everything was coming together. (None of the boys had agreed to join yet, but they could worry about that later.) "Hot gazoobies! We've practically got a whole team already!" He counted the names on his fingers. "There's you and me, and Jerry, and Blue and Lewie, and Ryan and Corey, and Eddie…"

"How about Petey Jones?"

Gerry's little face crumpled in a scowl. "Yuck! That big-mouth?"

"He may be a big-mouth, but he's a good player, an' he's pretty fast, too. You can never have enough fast runners, you know," Little Julius advised. "They're the ones who can take the ball to the end zone."

"Guess you're right," he admitted grudgingly, and returned to the task of picking potential club members. "How about Alan Bosely?"

Now, it was the black boy's turn to scoff. "Alan Bosely's a pipsqueak!"

"He may be a pipsqueak, but he's a nice guy. And his daddy owns the sporting goods store on Upton Avenue. Maybe if Alan joins, we can get a new football."

"We don't need a new football. Every kid in town has a football."

Just then, a loud _pop_ that caused them to jump. Gerry and Little Julius spied a Ping-Pong ball lying on the Bertiers' front lawn. There was another loud pop, and another, and a couple more Ping-Pong balls shot out from behind Gerry's momma's prize rosebushes.

They watched as a blond boy emerged from behind the rosebushes, carrying some kind of gun. The boy aimed his gun and shot another Ping-Pong ball. "Gotcha!" he said as the ball hit the tree that grew on one side of the lawn.

Gerry and Little Julius exchanged glances as the boy ran to gather up his Ping-Pong balls. When the black boy shrugged, Gerry turned to talk to the boy with the gun. "Hey, Ronnie, Julius and me are formin' a football club. You wanna join?"

The blond boy said nothing as he reloaded his gun. Little Julius thought he hadn't heard the invitation, but the boy called Ronnie finally shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so. Just let me finish off the rest of the bad guys, OK?"

"That's Ronnie Bass," Gerry explained when the boy had run off, "from five doors down."

"He's weird," Little Julius said, wrinkling his nose. He wasn't crazy-weird, like Old Pete who lived by himself in a shack on the edge of town, but it was like that Ronnie wasn't all there. His momma would have said that Ronnie had his head in the clouds.

"Yeah, but he has some great toys." And apparently that made him sort of OK in Gerry's book. "Who else can we ask to join?"

"Hey, Gerry!" a voice said then.

Gerry stifled a groan. "Hi, Ray," he said tonelessly as Ray Budds, a fat kid with squinty eyes and freckles, waddled up the Bertiers' front walk.

"Ma asked me to take this to your momma," Ray said, holding up a small bundle. "Says your momma left her gloves at our house the last time y'all visited."

"Mm-hmm."

The plump boy then noticed Little Julius for the first time. "Hey, what's goin' on?"

"Uh…nothin'," Gerry told him. "We was just hangin' around."

Ray looked hurt. "Didn't look like nothin' to me — y'all were talkin' about askin' someone to join somethin' when I came up. Are y'all formin' a club?" he asked. "Can I join?"

"We ain't got a club yet. We were just thinkin' of formin' one."

"Aw, c'mon, Gerry, let me join your club. We can have club meetings in my tree house."

"We don't need no tree house," Little Julius said. "We're formin' a football club and we need us a yard to practice in, not some tree house."

"Well, I've got a pretty big yard, too," Ray replied defensively. "We can practice there."

The black boy opened his mouth to say something back, but Gerry cut him off with a glance. "Look, like I said, we ain't got no club yet," Gerry said. "But if we do form one, we'll let you know and you can try out, OK?"

That seemed to pacify Ray, whose scowl turned into a smile. "OK! Thanks, Gerry! That'll be great! So, uh, I gotta go now—oh, wait, I almost forgot your momma's bundle." He laid it carefully on the porch steps. "Could you take it in to her for me? Thanks! 'Bye!"

"He couldn't even go all the way up here an' bring it to your momma hisself," Little Julius remarked, "and you're thinkin' of lettin' him into our club? What's with you, Gerry?"

Gerry sighed. "I had to say _somethin'_, Julius. If I he'd found out we was formin' a club and didn't want him in it, he would've gone cryin' to his momma and she would've called _my_ momma and Momma would've made us let him join."

The black boy grudgingly nodded his understanding. "No need to bring mommas into this," he remarked. "I just hope he's good for somethin'."

"Oh, he is. He does have a big backyard." Gerry grinned. "And Miz Budds makes great cookies."

Just then, the screen door opened and six-year-old Betsy Bertier skipped out onto the porch, holding a doll by one leg. "Can I be in the football club, too?" the little girl asked.

Gerry scowled at her. "Get out of here, Betsy! An' stop listenin' in on private conversations!" he added, throwing around two of the most grown-up words he knew. He said them perfectly, too. His momma had used them on him often enough.

Betsy scowled, too. She looked a lot like her brother when she scowled. "But I make good cookies, too," she said. "Just as good as Miz Budds makes."

"Well, football ain't for girls. We ain't askin' _Miz Budds_ to join the club, are we?"

"Football is _too_ for girls!" Betsy said, stamping a foot in emphasis. Her doll's blonde curls bounced. "You let me play with you last week! You let me be quarterback!"

"Aw, that wasn't real football," her brother scoffed.

"It sure felt like real football! You tackled me!"

"No, I _sacked_ you. That's different from tackling."

"That wasn't a real game, Betsy," Little Julius explained to her. "This time we're gonna have real teams and play some real games. Things might get rough."

"I can take it! I'm tough!"

"Yeah, you're tough for a girl," Gerry said, "but Momma still ain't gonna let you play. So go away and have a tea party or somethin'."

_"Brauuuugggghhhh!"_ Instead of crying, Betsy got mad. "I hate you, Gerry Bertier!" She swung her doll at her brother, smacking him hard on the arm, and stomped back inside the house. The screen door slammed behind her, loud enough to elicit a scolding from Betsy and Gerry's momma, who was inside making dinner.

Little Julius shook his head at his friend and sighed. "Women."


	2. Betsy's Revenge

**Disclaimer:** The city of Alexandria, the original Titans and their families belong to themselves while fictional characters from the film _Remember the Titans_ belong to Disney. Crayola belongs to the Crayola Crayon Company. Alice in Wonderland belongs to Lewis Carroll. Barbie belongs to Mattel and Kool-Aid to Kraft Foods. I only own Tamsin, her mother and her friends.

**Author's Notes:** At last, an update! I'm very sorry it took so long again, but I had a bit of computer trouble. I still do, actually :-( Anyway, thanks to me, Sundiata, darkdestiney2000 and fufulupin for reviewing. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

_Chapter Two — Betsy's Revenge_

"Tamsin, dear, what are you doing inside on a day like this?"

Tamsin Lee looked up from the picture she was drawing and found her mother standing in the doorway to her room, a slender figure in blue. _No, not just blue,_ Tamsin thought. _Turquoise._ That's what her deluxe 64-crayon Crayola box called it. "I'm drawing," she finally said.

"But it's such a lovely day, darling! Why don't you go outside?"

She shrugged. "There's nothing to do outside."

"There's _always_ something to do outside! Why don't you play with some of the neighborhood children?"

"I don't know any of them, Mom."

"Well, I'm not surprised, given the way you shut yourself up in the house all day long! Come on, sweetie — the Hoyts down the street are new in town and they have that little girl who's about your age, remember? I'm sure they'll be happy to know that Emma's making friends."

A slight frown was beginning on Tamsin's small face. "How do you know that she and I will be friends?"

Her mother was starting to frown, too. "Well, if she doesn't like you, then she doesn't know a good person when she sees one," she replied, her hands on her hips. "Come on, Tamsin, please don't give me a hard time."

"But I don't want to go out!"

"You will if you know what's good for you, Tamsin Rose Lee!"

That had sounded dangerously like a threat for a spanking, so Tamsin shut her mouth, put down her crayons, and went outside like her mother told her to do.

She knew where the Hoyts' house was. She had gone there last week with her mother, her Uncle Jon and a welcome-to-the-neighborhood cake. Tamsin thought Emma looked like Alice from _Alice in Wonderland_ and that she seemed pretty nice, but it had been a short visit so they didn't have the time to get to know each other better.

She found Emma on her porch, playing with another little girl. For a while, Tamsin thought of just returning home, as Emma seemed to already have a friend, but then decided to stay. Her mother would be pleased when she found out that Tamsin had made two friends instead of just one.

Mustering up her courage — because she was rather shy with people she didn't know, especially kids — Tamsin went up the Hoyts' front walk, toward the two girls. "Hi, Emma," she said in a loud voice to make sure they could hear her. "I'm Tamsin Lee. Do you remember me?"

Emma looked up and smiled at her. "Hi, Tamsin. Yes, I remember you."

"What are you doing?"

"Playing," the blonde girl replied, holding up a Barbie doll in a dramatic black evening gown. The other girl, who was busy dressing her own doll, said nothing.

"That's nice." Tamsin nodded at the doll, not knowing what else to say to make conversation. "She's pretty."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome." She locked her hands behind her back and peered at the jumble of doll clothes on the porch. She couldn't find a third doll that she could play with, but decided to go ahead and ask anyway. "Can I — may I play with you?"

Emma smiled. Tamsin thought she was about to say yes, but the other girl spoke up before Emma could. "I don't play with Japs."

_"Betsy!"_ Emma gasped.

"I'm not Japanese," Tamsin told the girl named Betsy. "I'm Chinese."

"Same difference," said Betsy, not even bothering to look at Tamsin as she spoke. "Come on, Emma, let's go to my house."

Her cheeks burning at the curt dismissal, Tamsin turned away and ran, her dark braids flying behind her. She didn't want to watch them leave and she didn't want to let them see her crying.

Why did her mother make her go to Emma's house? she wondered as she continued on down the street. Tamsin had known that they wouldn't like her, but her mother wouldn't listen. She couldn't wait to get home and tell Mom that she was wrong. But a small part of Tamsin wished that her mother had been right and that Emma would have wanted to be her friend.

Suddenly, she bumped into something. _"Ow!"_ the something cried.

Tamsin backed away, scrubbing at her eyes. "Sorry," she said. When she could see again, she saw that she had run into a tall black girl in a faded cotton dress. Another black girl stood nearby, a jumping rope in her hand. "I'm sorry," she repeated.

"What's the matter?" the first girl asked as she rubbed her back. "You havin' trouble seein' or somethin'?"

"No, I was—" she gave an embarrassed sniffle and looked at the ground. "Never mind."

"You been cryin'?"

Tamsin shook her head even as she sniffled again. "Never mind, I said."

"I'm Sharon Williams."

She blinked, startled, and looked up. "What?"

"Sharon Williams," the girl repeated. "That's my name. And this here's Cat Davidson."

"Hi," the second girl said.

"Cat?" Tamsin asked. "Like the animal?"

"That's right," Cat replied with a smile. "It's short for 'Catherine,' but I thought 'Cathy' was too ordinary, so I made everyone call me 'Cat' instead."

Tamsin found herself smiling, too. "That's…interesting," she finally said. It was a nice story and she thought it was great that Cat could make people call her what she wanted to be called, but she really didn't know what to say.

"What's your name?" Sharon asked her then.

"Oh, sorry, I forgot…I'm Tamsin Lee."

"Pretty name." Cat nodded her approval. "If I had me a name like that, I wouldn't need a special nickname. Wanna play with us, Tamsin?"

Tamsin's eyes widened. "Play with you?"

"Sure." Sharon pointed to another jumping rope lying on the ground nearby. "We need another person so we can play Double Dutch jump rope. How about it?"

"Or maybe you don't play with blacks?" Cat suggested then, looking suspicious for the first time.

Tamsin didn't like Cat's tone of voice, but she understood why the other girl was using it. She met Cat's stare head-on. "We don't care about that kind of thing at home," she said. "I can play with whoever I like."

"So you'll play with us?"

"Sure."

Tamsin wasn't very good at Double Dutch, so she let Cat and Sharon take all her turns while she turned the jumping ropes. That suited them all just fine, and the three girls had fun jumping rope and calling out rhymes. They had to stop after a while though, because it was a hot afternoon and they got tired easily.

They sat down on the grassy part of the curb and Cat stuck out her tongue, making an exhausted face. She fanned the front of her dress to try and cool down. "Man, is it hot. I wish it would rain."

"It's summer, silly," Sharon reminded her, swiping at her forehead with the back of her hand. "You should be wishin' the ice cream man shows up."

"But we ain't got no money."

"Even if we don't buy anything, we can just stand near the window and suck in some cold air." Sharon sighed wistfully at the thought.

Tamsin sighed, too. Turning the ropes and calling out rhymes was just as tiring as jumping. She, too, was hot and sweaty. Something cold and frosty would be real good right about now…_A-HA!_ "I know!" she said, sitting up. "We could make snow cones!"

"Snow cones?" Sharon asked.

Tamsin nodded, pleased that she had their attention. She and Uncle Jon always made snow cones in the summer instead of buying ice cream. "It's easy — you just need juice and crushed ice."

"We've got Kool-Aid at home," Cat told her, "and my grandma has an ice crusher."

"Will she let us use it?"

Sharon jumped up. "Sure," she said. "Cat's grandma is a real nice lady." She held out her hands and arched her eyebrow at the other two girls. "Come on! I'm thirsty!"

Tamsin watched Cat grab hold of one of Sharon's hands and stand up. Smiling, she took hold of the other one, jumped to her feet and ran after her new friends.

* * *

Gerry whistled cheerfully as he walked down the Bertiers' second-floor hallway to his room. The lineup for the football club was coming along nicely. Besides Ronnie Bass, Alan Bosely and the Hunter twins had agreed to join the club. According to Little Julius, Blue Stanton and Lewie Lastik were in, too, and Jerry Harris was going to ask his father about having less choir practice so he could play football. If they got enough people, they could still let Ray Budds join, but keep him as a reserve. That way, they could use his yard to practice in but not necessarily have to actually play with him.

"More tea, Princess Juliet?" Betsy asked as Gerry walked past her room. Her dramatic tone of voice made him snicker. His sister wasn't bad for a girl, but she played the dumbest games.

"Thank you, Princess Aurora, I'd love more tea."

The response to Betsy's question made him stop walking. _That_ wasn't one of his sister's fake voices. Gerry backtracked a bit and peeked into the open doorway.

His sister was sitting amid heaps of girl toys, pretending to drink from a pink plastic teacup. He was just about to laugh at the stupid crown on her head when he noticed the other girl in the room.

Even though he was only seven and basically thought girls were silly, Gerry had to admit that this one was pretty. She had yellow hair and big blue eyes like the girls in the storybooks his momma read aloud at bedtime. She was wearing a crown, too, but on her it didn't look stupid. It made her look like a real princess.

Just then, both girls saw him. Betsy put her teacup down with a clatter and glared at her brother. "Get out of here, Gerry!"

"I don't wanna," he drawled, grinning the grin that he knew would annoy the heck out of her. "Who's your friend?"

"I'm Emma Hoyt," the girl said before Betsy could answer. "I just moved here a couple of weeks ago."

"Hi, Emma; I'm Gerry, Betsy's big brother. Welcome to the neighborhood," he added, hoping the greeting made him sound more grownup.

"Thank you."

Gerry thought Emma had a very pretty smile, almost as pretty as his momma's. "Have you met other kids in the neighborhood yet?"

"Some," she replied. "Not very many yet. I s'pose I'll meet them all when school starts."

"Aw, that's still ages away. If you want, you can join this new club me and my friends have started. That way you can meet some more kids."

Suddenly, there was an angry screech from Betsy. _"You're askin' her to join the football club?"_ she demanded, jumping to her feet and knocking her crown over one eye. _"After you said I couldn't join? That ain't fair, Gerry Bertier!"_

"Oh, well, me an' Julius were talkin' about it the other day and we decided to let girls join," Gerry told her, thinking fast. He hoped Julius wouldn't say no when they finally _did_ talk about it. "Do you wanna join, too, Bets?"

"Yes, please join, Betsy," Emma said. "I don't want to be the only girl in the club."

Betsy folded her arms and scowled. Gerry's heart sank when it became obvious what her answer was going to be. "No!" she snapped.

"Come on, Betsy," he entreated. "Me an' Julius were still talking about the rules when you asked to join. Now we know what the rules are, you can join."

"I wouldn't join your stupid ol' club even if you paid me!"

"Stop shouting, Betsy; we have company!"

"This is my house, too, and I'll talk however I want!" Betsy gave him her best eye-blazing, nostril-flaring, chin-jutting glare. "Emma an' me aren't joinin' your stupid football club!"

Gerry looked at Emma, hoping she would say that she was joining the football club even without Betsy, but the blonde girl looked apologetic. "I'm sorry," she said, "but I'm not joining if Betsy's not joining."

"Darned right I ain't joinin'," Betsy declared. "Me n' Emma are startin' our _own_ football club, just for girls, and Gerry, we'll beat you boys to smithereens!"


	3. The Recruiting Game

**Disclaimer:** Frye Road and its environs belong to the city of Alexandria, VA. The original Titans, Little Richard, Ritchie Valens and Elvis Presley belong to themselves and Emma Hoyt belongs to Disney. The remainder belongs to me.

**Author's Notes:** Thanks to The Morning Starr for helping me try to make this story more authentic and to darkdestiney2000 and Rae Kelly for the reviews!

_Chapter Three — The Recruiting Game_

_Rustle. Rustle. _"Ow! Are you sure this tree doesn't have prickles?"

"Hush up, Emma! They'll hear you!"

"Something's got my hair!"

_Rustle. Rustle. _"There. Now gimme the binoc'lars."

It was a quiet afternoon on Frye Road. There weren't many people around because lots of the grown-ups were still at work. The sun was out, but it wasn't that hot anymore, and a slight breeze was blowing. It was perfect weather for playing outside.

It was also perfect for spying, which was just what Betsy and Emma were doing in a tree across the street from the Buddses' house. Betsy had heard her brother talking on the phone, setting up the first-ever meeting of the boys' football club, and knew she had to be there, too, so she could check out the competition.

"I see Gerry," Betsy reported, "an' Julius Campbell…an' Alan Bosely…an' the Hunter twins…an' a lot of black boys I don't know…golly, they musta rounded up every boy in town to join their club!"

"What are they doing?"

"Standin' around."

"What?"

"Gerry's sayin' somethin' and they're all standin' around listenin' to him."

"I thought it was a football club," Emma remarked. "Ain't they gonna play any football?"

"Football players need a coach to tell 'em what to do. I s'pose Gerry's the coach of the club and he's tellin' 'em what to do."

"Oh." Emma took the binoculars and peered through them. "Some of those boys look awful big."

"Yeah, so we'd better get some big girls, too, to be in _our_ club."

"Do you know any big girls?"

"No, but that won't stop me from askin' 'em to join our club when I see 'em."

Suddenly, Emma gave a squeal. "Oh! They're playing!"

"Really? Lemme see." Betsy took the binoculars again. "Oh, they ain't playin' a real game yet," she said. "They're just practicin' passin' the ball to each other." A couple of the boys were really good, she noted grudgingly; Gerry would probably make them quarterbacks. Quite a few, however, fumbled the ball, tripped over their feet trying to catch it, or got bonked on the head.

"But still, they're practicing!" the other girl said. "They're already playing, and we haven't even gotten any new members yet! We'd better find people to join our club, and quick!"

* * *

Tamsin bolted down a few forkfuls of eggs, gulped down her orange juice, and put down her glass with a _thud_. "Can I go out and play now?" she asked, chomping on a curl of bacon.

"No," Uncle Jon answered, "you _may not_ go out and play just yet; and please chew with your mouth closed. You have to rest and let the food digest a bit," he explained when Tamsin scowled. "Playing right after you eat might give you a stomachache."

"Someone's in a hurry to get out of the house this morning," her mother observed.

She nodded. "Cat and Sharon and me are going to hang out."

"Hang out, huh?" Uncle Jon repeated with an amused smile. "Sounds like a really grown-up thing for three little girls to do. Where are you going?"

"Just downtown. We're going to play in the park first, and then we're going to have lunch at Cat's house, and then we're going window-shopping until it's time to go home." Tamsin fidgeted in her seat and swung her legs restlessly. "Can I go now?"

"All right," her mother said. "But walk slowly. Do you have money?"

"Yes, I have money," she replied, jumping to her feet. "I have a dollar and some change."

"Well, take care not to lose it. And call home if you need someone to come get you. _And don't talk to strangers!_" Her mother called after her. While she was speaking, Tamsin had been edging closer and closer to the front door. _"Bye!"_

_"Bye!"_ Tamsin called back, waving and letting herself out of the house.

Once she was out, she turned toward the street and smiled. It was a bright and sunny summer day and she was going to play with her friends. What could be more perfect?

Even though her mother had told her to go slowly, Tamsin couldn't help walking quickly to the park. What could she do? She was a fast walker.

She met Cat and Sharon by the fountain and the three girls had a lot of fun playing until Cat's big brother came to tell them it was lunchtime. They ate at Cat's grandmother's house a couple of blocks away. Mrs. Davidson — or Maxie, as she liked to be called — owned a jazz club downtown. Tamsin knew this before Maxie even said anything because she had heard her mother and Uncle Jon talking about the place. They said it was as good as the places they used to go to in New York.

After lunch, Maxie also insisted that they rest a bit, but Tamsin thought it was more fun this time around because they listened to records while they were waiting to leave. Maxie had lots of jazz records, but she had rock n' roll records, too. "And I mean _real_ rock n' roll, _chères_," she said in her special Southern drawl. Tamsin had never heard anyone talk like her before. "Little Richard, Richie Valens, Elvis — not those pretenders all the little girls are squealin' over."

Maxie let them go just when their feet started moving to the music. "That's how I know y'all got your energy back," she told them with a laugh. "All right, you may go. Have fun, _bebés_."

But window-shopping proved to be less fun than it sounded. The girls walked around town looking in the store windows, but soon tired of looking at dresses and hats they couldn't wear. Instead, they turned their attention to the people around them.

"My uncle calls this 'people-watching,'" Tamsin remarked as they leaned against an empty bicycle rack and watched the people going by.

"It sounds like bird-watching," Sharon laughed.

"I think it's the same thing, only with people," Cat said.

The men were boring to watch; they all dressed alike and didn't appear very cheerful. Lots of the mothers looked busy or unhappy, too. Their babies were sweet, though. A little boy with blond hair and blue eyes gave them a cheerful, drooly grin before his mother hustled him away.

Tamsin's favorites were the "bad girls." She liked the way they dressed, with their tight skirts, bright scarves and satin baseball jackets. She admired the way they strutted down the street as if they owned it and blew bubbles with their gum at anyone who dared give them a disapproving look. "I want to look just like them when I grow up," she said as a redheaded "bad girl" glanced at her over the top of her cat's-eye sunglasses and gave her a scarlet-lipstick smile.

"Tamsin, you wouldn't dare!" Sharon said, scandalized. "Everyone will think you're a bad girl!" She didn't know what bad girls did exactly, but the label spoke for itself.

"So? Just because I'll look like one won't mean that I'll actually be one."

"Your momma won't let you out of the house dressed like that."

"Of course she will," Cat scoffed. "Tamsin's momma is one cool lady."

Just then, a bulky body in a blue uniform obstructed their view. "What are you little girls doing here?" the policeman asked them.

Tamsin looked surprised at the question. She looked to her friends and, when none of them said anything, took it upon herself to speak for the group. "We're just hanging out, officer," she said. "We're people-watching."

"Do your mommas know where you are?"

"Yes, sir, we all asked permission before we left the house today. Right?" she asked her friends. Sharon and Cat nodded mutely.

"Well, isn't it about time y'all went home? Little girls like you shouldn't be hangin' around here by yourselves."

Tamsin started to scowl. "We're not by ourselves — we're together!" she blurted out.

Sharon poked her in the arm. "Tamsin, don't talk back to policemen!" she hissed.

The policeman looked down at them and Tamsin felt her friends shrink away from him. He looked awfully big. "Be that as it may, little girl, you still ain't got no adult with you."

"Those little boys look like they're all by themselves, too," she replied, pointing down the street to a group of kids only slightly older than she and her friends. "Why aren't you hassling _them_?"

"I will right after I'm through with you," the policeman told her. "Now, are you going to go home like good little citizens, or am I going to have to take you home myself?"

"Come on, Tamsin." It was Cat's turn to poke her arm. "Let's just go."

"I don't see why we have to," she muttered rebelliously as the girls started down the street. "We weren't doing anything wrong." Tamsin glanced over her shoulder and saw that the group of boys she had pointed at was still there. "And what are _they_ still doing there? He didn't talk to them at all!"

"Well, they're boys," Sharon said. "I guess the policeman thought they could look after themselves."

Tamsin bristled indignantly. "And _we_ can't just because we're girls?"

"They're also all white," Cat pointed out.

Tamsin scowled and shook her head, frustrated. "There is no justice in the world."

She was still in a bad mood when Emma Hoyt found them. "Tamsin!" the blonde girl said, trotting up with the girl called Betsy in tow. "I was hoping we'd bump into you!"

"Why?" Tamsin asked flatly.

Emma pulled Betsy forward. "Betsy has something to ask you."

Tamsin arched an eyebrow at the other little girl, who didn't look very happy to see her, either. "Well, what is it?"

Betsy glanced at Emma, and then turned back to Tamsin. "Me and Emma are formin' us a club," she mumbled. "We were wonderin' if you'd like to join."

"Me? Join your club?" Tamsin repeated. "I thought you said you didn't play with people like me."

"That was _before_," Emma jumped in. "Now Betsy wants to be friends."

For a while, it looked like Betsy was going to deny it, but she eventually nodded in agreement. "It'd be really great if you joined our club."

Tamsin thought it over for a moment. She thought Betsy was only pretending to be friendly so she could get people to join her club, but she didn't know that for sure. _Innocent until proven guilty,_ Uncle Jon always told her. _Everyone deserves a second chance._ "OK, I'll join your club," she finally said, "but only if Sharon and Cat can join, too."

Tamsin watched Betsy peer at her friends. If Betsy didn't want to let them join because she didn't play with blacks, then Tamsin would say that _she_ didn't play with racists and refuse to join the club.

But Betsy nodded her head. "If they want to join, they're in."

Cat and Sharon exchanged glances. "Sure, we'll join," Sharon said after a while. Then she looked curiously at Betsy. "What does your club do, anyway?"


	4. You Want Us to WHAT?

**Disclaimer:** The original Titans and their families belong to themselves while the fictitious characters from the film _Remember the Titans_ belong to Disney. Everyone else belongs to me. If you haven't read them yet, most of my original characters appear in my other RtT fics, _You Ought to Be With Me _and_ Good Night, Sweet Prince_, also here on this site.

**Author's Notes:** Thank you to darkdestiney2000, Sister Golden Hair, torian princess and Rae Kelly for reviewing!

_Chapter Four — You Want Us to WHAT?_

At the first-ever meeting of Betsy and Emma's girls' football club, which was held in the Hoyts' back yard, the first thing Emma did was frown. "Our list says we got eleven girls to join," she said, checking the list she had made in the diary that was going to serve as their club notebook, "but there are fifteen of us here."

"Some of them said they were gonna bring their friends," Betsy reminded her. "And it's a good thing, too — this means we can have a second string!"

"Second string of what?"

Betsy opened her mouth to exclaim that she couldn't believe the other girl didn't know what a second string was, but stopped herself from speaking at the last moment. "I'll explain later," she said finally.

As she spoke, Betsy surveyed their lineup with satisfaction. She thought they had a pretty good team. Sharon and Cat were kind of thin, but they were tall and Betsy was sure they were fast runners. There were a couple of big girls, too: there was Jenny Griffin, a chubby girl who lived two blocks over from the Hoyts, and a black girl named Pearl who looked like she was used to pushing people around. And they had Lizzie Lindros who, like Betsy, had wanted to join Gerry's football club and was mad when she found out that it was only for boys.

Besides Betsy and Lizzie, it didn't seem that any of the other girls knew anything about football, but Betsy thought it would be easy enough to teach them. This was going to be fun. _Watch out, Gerry!_ she thought smugly.

Just then, Tamsin walked over to her, a small frown on her face. "Hey, Betsy, the other girls are getting bored. What are we supposed to do?"

"I was just about to tell you," Betsy told her. She blew a shrill blast from the toy whistle hanging around her neck to get everyone's attention and, when they were quiet, began to speak. "First off," she said, "welcome to the All-Girls' Football Club. Emma n' me are awful glad y'all could join."

"It's about time we girls had a club of our own!" Lizzie hollered, clapping her hands.

Betsy smiled at her. "It sure is, and our club is going to be even better than the boys'. But to do that, we got a lot of work to do, and we have to start right now."

Sharon raised her hand, just like in school, and waited for Betsy to call upon her before speaking. "What are we going to do?"

"We're goin' to work on our skills." Betsy gestured toward the obstacle course she and Emma had set up using part of Emma's jungle gym, some string, tent pegs and a bunch of old bicycle tires Betsy had wheedled from Old Man Witherspoon's Junkyard Christmas Tree Farm. "Let's see how fast y'all can go through this. Who wants to go first?"

Silence fell over the group. Betsy looked at the other girls expectantly, but no one made a move. Instead, they all shuffled from foot to foot, eyeing the obstacle course dubiously. "C'mon," she entreated them, "we ain't got all day."

Finally, one of the girls, a redheaded one named Miranda, spoke up.

"I don't think I want to do that," she said. "I might ruin my dress."

* * *

It took two club meetings before Betsy finally managed to get everyone in her club to go through the obstacle course. Even worse, the results were dismal. "Everyone's so darned slow!" she fumed to Emma one afternoon after the others had gone home. 

"What do you mean, everyone?" the blonde girl asked.

"Sorry, _almost_ everyone," Betsy amended quickly, and then tapped the club notebook lying open in front of her. "Will you look at these times?" Emma was right, some of the girls weren't too bad; but most of them were still terrible. They had plodded through the obstacle course like turtles, and those who had tried to go fast had tripped or made lots of mistakes.

"Don't worry, Betsy, this is just the beginning. They'll get better and faster the more we practice, you'll see."

"I hope so. Gerry's club is already practicin' real moves! They're so far ahead of us, we'll never catch up!"

Betsy was right; the boys' football club was indeed ahead of the girls' — but not by much. "You can throw it three miles, Ronnie," Gerry said after the blond boy made an incomplete pass to Petey Jones, "but you can't pitch it three feet! What's wrong?"

Ronnie shrugged. "Nothing's wrong," he answered. "I just can't do it."

Gerry sighed. At least Ronnie hadn't sounded hurt or embarrassed, which meant that Gerry wasn't being too tough on him. "Sure you can," he told the other boy, hoping he sounded encouraging. "Let's try it again. Concentrate this time, OK?"

"Good thing he's just our second-string quarterback," Little Julius whispered to Gerry as they their places in the defensive line.

Ronnie called the play again and the offense began to run their patterns. He managed to bobble the ball over to Petey this time, but the game stopped again shortly after that, when two players got tangled up together and fell.

"That hurt!" Ray whined as he picked himself up. His freckled face was crumpled, as if he were going to cry.

"_That_ hurt?" Ryan Hunter retorted as his brother Corey helped him up and dusted him off. "_You_ fell on _me_ and _I_ hit the ground! Now, _that_ hurt!"

"Hold on, now, you two," Gerry said, stepping in before Ray started sniveling and Mrs. Budds flew out of the house with milk, cookies and a first-aid kit. "No one got _really_ hurt, did they?"

Ryan glared at Ray. "No, but I almost got squashed flat as a pancake."

"I can't help it if I'm like this," Ray sniffled. "My momma says I have big bones."

"At least it wasn't Blue who fell on you," Petey told Ryan.

This made almost everyone laugh and Gerry grinned gratefully at Petey. The black boy was a big-mouth, but he was a _good_ big-mouth and a great football player, too. "All right, everyone, let's take a break."

_

* * *

"Brauuuugggghhhh!" _

_THUMP._

Betsy squeezed her eyes shut, and when she opened them again she saw Emma and Sharon looking anxiously down at her. "Betsy, are you all right?" Emma asked.

"I'm OK," she answered. "I think I'll just lie here for a while."

"I'm sorry the ball hit you. It slipped out of my hands."

Betsy turned her head and saw their one and only football — the only one Lizzie could sneak out of her brother's room without being caught — lying on the grass not far away from her. "Nothing hit me. I just fell by myself."

"Well, get up," Sharon said. "How will we know if we're doing things right if you don't watch us?"

_I don't want to watch you,_ Betsy thought as the girls' heads moved out of sight. She thought she would rather lie on the ground and stare at the sky instead of watching the club practice because they were terrible.

Some of the girls could run fast, but most were still slow. Everyone knew how to catch a ball, but only Lizzie and Betsy knew anything about passing. And _forget_ about tackling…!

_"Ow!"_ Tamsin shouted presently, and Betsy stifled a groan. Their tackling dummy, which was nothing more than a rolled-up old mattress, had probably taken Tamsin off her feet instead of the other way around.

"Are you all right?" Betsy heard Cat ask.

"I'm fine," Tamsin answered. "My behind hurts a little is all."

"You're lucky it's just your behind," Miranda said. "_I'm_ black and blue all over."

Betsy made a face. _Black and blue!_ she thought indignantly. All Miranda did was stand around and show off her dresses! It was a good thing there were more than enough girls in the club so they didn't really need _her_!

_But they might need Miranda if you don't get up,_ she told herself.

Betsy groaned. Even if she didn't want to, she had to get up and get back to practice. The others weren't going to get any better with just Emma and, to some extent, Lizzie telling them what to do. And Gerry would probably laugh his pants off if he found out how badly they were doing…

* * *

"I'm home," Gerry announced listlessly as he trudged into the Bertiers' house. Behind him, the front door shut with a gentle click, as if it were too tired to slam closed. He sort of knew how the door felt. 

At the sound of his voice, his momma looked up from her reading and smiled. "Hello, Gerry. You're home early today."

"Practice ended early," he answered, hanging up his cap on the hat-rack by the door, between his momma's going-to-church hat and Betsy's Easter bonnet. As he did so, he glanced at the empty peg at the end of the hat-rack and said a quick prayer for his daddy who was in heaven.

"I'm afraid I haven't started dinner yet," his momma was saying, "but if you're hungry, there are chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen."

"Thanks, Momma."

"Wash your hands before you eat any!"

Gerry found Betsy sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of milk and the plate of cookies. "Don't eat 'em all," he told his sister as he washed his hands in the sink.

"I'm not gonna eat 'em all," she answered back, scowling at him.

There were plenty of cookies left when Gerry sat down at the table with his own glass of milk. His stomach growled hungrily and he took one, finding it still warm from the oven.

The cookie was delicious — his momma's cookies always were — but it did little to improve his bad mood. Things had not been going well in his football club. Ever since that day he fell in practice, Ray was saying he was on the "injured list" and refusing to play. Having him out of the team was just what Gerry and Little Julius had wanted, of course, but the others didn't know that. They were complaining about how Petey had to fill in for Ray on the offensive line when Ray obviously wasn't injured. Playing both ways was making Petey tired and he had almost twisted his ankle that afternoon.

Just then, Gerry noticed that Betsy looked just about as dirty as he was. She didn't really look and dress as nice as, say, Emma Hoyt, but that day his sister's hair was all fuzzy and messy, there were a lot of dirt and grass stains on her T-shirt and overalls. "Did you wash your hands?" he asked her brusquely.

"Of course."

"They still look dirty."

"It's the chocolate."

Gerry looked at his hands and saw the smears of melted chocolate on them. "Thought it was dirt like what you've got all over you," he said. "Why do you look so messy, anyway?"

Betsy lifted her chin. "Football practice," she answered proudly. When she had come home, her momma had made a fuss about her messy appearance and ordered her to take a bath, but Betsy hadn't done it yet. She wanted her brother to see her like this.

But instead of being impressed, Gerry made the "know-it-all" face that he knew she hated. "Your club actually practices?" he scoffed.

She frowned. "Sure. What did you think we do? Sit around and play with dolls? Well, you're wrong, Gerry Bertier," she told him. "We have real practices, with drills and plays and everything." Actually, they hadn't quite moved on to running plays yet, but he didn't have to know that.

"I didn't know there were enough girls in this town who knew how to play football."

"Well, there are, and they're better than you think." By now, most of the girls in Betsy's football club had at least some idea of how the game worked and they were practicing passing and tackling and all that stuff. They weren't any good, but it still meant that they kind of knew how to play, didn't it?

"Are they?" her brother snickered.

"Yes, they are. They're great." The lie flew out of her mouth before she realized what she was saying. "I bet we're just as good as you boys are," Betsy said, hoping she sounded convincing.

Gerry laughed. He was about to tell her that that wasn't saying much, but pride kept him from telling the truth. "You'll never be as good as us," he answered, hoping he sounded convincing. "Not in a million billion years."


	5. The Challenge

**Disclaimer:** The TC Williams Titans and the city of Alexandria belong to themselves, and the fictitious characters from the movie _Remember the Titans_ belong to Disney. I own everything else. Yay for me.

**Author's Note:** Wow, this has been a long time coming! Sorry this is taking so long, but a lot has happened and I haven't been able to write or post new chapters as often as I would like! Thanks for reading and I hope you'll continue to stay tuned for the succeeding chapters; I'm still working on this story and intend to finish it!

_Chapter Five — The Challenge_

Sunday mornings were nice because they were quiet, but they could also get pretty boring.

Cat stifled a yawn as she walked with her grandmother and her brother Elliot down the carpeted aisle of the First Alexandria Baptist Church. It took forever to get home after services. Because Grandma was in the choir and had to change out of her robes before leaving, they were always at the back of the _very_ slow-moving line to get out. And when they reached the front of the line, Grandma always spent a hundred years talking to Reverend Harris and his wife.

"Lovely service today, Reverend!"

"Thank you, Miz Davidson! But then I couldn't have done it without my choir, now, could I?"

"Oh, we just do our best, and the Lord does the rest!"

The Reverend's wife beamed at Grandma, and then at Cat and her brother. "Aren't you lucky to have such a wonderful Christian lady for a grandma, children?"

"We sure are, ma'am," Elliot agreed with the nice-boy smile he used on grown-ups.

Grandma beamed fondly. "And I'm lucky to have such darling grandchildren."

"Would you excuse me for a minute? I see some of my friends out front and would like to say goodbye to them."

"All right, _bebé_," Grandma said while Mrs. Harris nodded approvingly at Elliot's manners. "You run along while the Reverend and I discuss some church business."

"Thank you. Good afternoon, Reverend, Mrs. Harris." Elliot ran off.

"Cat, why don't you sit with Annie and Laurie?" Grandma suggested to her then. She nodded toward the last pew, where the Harris girls were sitting. "This may take a while."

Cat looked at the two girls in their frilly pastel dresses, whispering with each other and swinging their shiny-shod feet. Yes, she could sit with them, but they were practically babies. "No, thank you," she answered her grandmother. "I think I'll go outside, too. Excuse me," she said, mimicking her brother's tone.

Outside the church, she saw Elliot and his friends hanging out beside Cat's Grandma's Cadillac, which was parked along the sidewalk. She was about to go and join them when a familiar voice caught her attention.

Petey Jones, who was in her class at school, was huddled by the door with Blue Stanton, Little Julius Campbell and Reverend Harris's son, Jerry. "That Alan Bosely," Petey was saying, "he ain't so good."

"He's getting better," Jerry said.

"Yeah, but he's still off sometimes. It's a good thing he managed to be in place yesterday so we were able to run the flea flicker—"

_Flea flicker!_ She had heard Betsy talking about that the other day! "Are y'all talking about football?" Cat blurted out before she could stop herself.

The boys all looked at her, surprised. "Uh, yeah," Blue answered slowly. "How did you know?"

"Oh, I play some football, too."

Petey snickered. "Really?"

Cat raised her chin and glared at him. In school, he often got in trouble because he didn't know how to keep his mouth shut. "Yes, really. I play with my friends all the time. How else would I know what a flea flicker is?" _Shame on you, Catherine Davidson, for telling a lie on a Sunday, and right after church, too!_

_Well, it isn't really a lie; I _do _know that flea flickers have to do with football!_

"That's true," Little Julius admitted.

"Are you having trouble doing—I mean, running a flea flicker?" Cat asked the boys. _In football, you "run" a play,_ she reminded herself just in time. That was the way Betsy always said it.

"Yeah," Petey answered. "We know how it works and all, but we just can't seem to get it right. Usually Alan's way out of place when it's time for Jerry to pitch him the ball. We got lucky yesterday, but then after that we found out he's so slow that the defense was all over him before he even started runnin' for the end zone."

Jerry frowned slightly. "If you can't say anything nice, Petey…"

"…just tell it like it is," Blue finished, sticking out his tongue at the minister's son. "Church is over, Rev'rend Harris. You don't need to preach at me no more."

"Well, it's not just Alan's fault, you know," Cat said. "Your play could be going wrong because of other things. Maybe you aren't communicating with Alan enough — I mean, you've got to be in tune with each other out on the field, right? And…and maybe you should have more people watching out for him and making sure no one gets him while he has the ball!" she finished triumphantly.

Little Julius looked thoughtful. "Yeah, you're right," he said after a while.

"Really?" Cat blurted out.

Fortunately, none of the boys seemed to have heard her. "We'd better tell Gerry about trying to put more linesmen near Alan," Little Julius told his friends. "Maybe that'll help him hold on to the ball."

"And while that's goin' on, the Rev here will also be prayin' that Alan starts runnin' faster," Petey added, laughing and nudging Jerry.

Jerry smiled at Cat. "Wow, Cat, that's a real smart idea. I wonder why we didn't think of it that way."

Cat shrugged modestly as her grandmother and the Harrises finally came out of the church building. "You just didn't," she said.

Grandma waved to Cat on her way to the car, signaling that it was time to go home. Cat gave the boys one final smile before turning and running to her grandmother. "What were you doing with the boys, _bebé_?" Grandma asked as Cat caught up with her and took her hand.

"Oh, nothing much," she answered, feeling just the tiniest bit smug. "I was just teaching them a thing or two about football."

* * *

The boys didn't get to try out Cat's idea right away, though, because the next time their football club got together, they had what Gerry called a "team meeting" instead of practice. "There's another football club in town," he announced, and then paused to let his words sink in. "An _all-girls_ football club."

"_What?"_ Ryan exclaimed.

"Maybe that's Cat's club," Petey said to Blue and Little Julius.

"I've heard about that," Eddie Lindros remarked. "I think my little sister's a member."

"That's ridic'lous!" Ray sputtered. "Girls can't play football!"

"_They_ think they can," Jerry pointed out.

"Well, they can't!"

Gerry held up a hand for silence. "The girls don't care if we think they can't play football," he said. "They have their club, whether we like it or not. Now, what are we gonna do about it?"

"Let's tell 'em they can't have a football club!" Ray said. "They're girls and girls can't play football!"

"They ain't gonna listen to us," Petey scoffed.

"Yeah," Eddie agreed. "Maybe instead of breaking up their club, they'll just beat you up."

Ray scowled. With his fat face and freckles, he looked like an angry poppy seed cookie. "I'll beat _them_ up!"

"We can't do that," Little Julius told him. "They'll run crying to their mommas for sure, and we'll get into big trouble."

"Guess that means we can't play pranks on them, either," Ryan said.

"Too bad," Petey remarked in a voice as glum as Ryan's. "It would've been fun to put frogs in their football helmets or something like that." The rest of the boys chuckled at the suggestion, and then fell silent again.

Suddenly, Lewie Lastik spoke up. "Why can't we just let their club alone?" he asked earnestly. "If they wanna play football, then why not let 'em?"

Everyone had to admit that Lewie had a point. The more levelheaded boys decided that they would leave the girls alone because if the girls wanted to play football as much as they did, then the girls should be allowed to have their club. If someone had told the boys that they couldn't have a football club, the boys were sure that they would go ahead and have a club anyway.

The other boys, however, had different ideas.

* * *

"_Stop it! Stop it!"_ Betsy screamed, throwing down the girls' football club playbook. She blew a loud blast on her whistle. "Sally Jane! You're s'posed to go _left_, not right! Don't you know where your left and your right are?"

"I'm still learning!" Sally Jane replied.

Betsy blew furiously on her whistle again and motioned for the rest of the team to stop practice and gather around her. "What's wrong with all y'all?" she yelled. "You ain't takin' this seriously. You have to get serious, 'cause football is a serious business!"

"I thought it was a game," Tamsin remarked.

"Well, it's a serious game!" Betsy retorted. "There are positions and ways of playin' and everything! You can't play it properly unless you know your position and do what you're s'posed to do! How can you play the game if you don't know how to play it properly?"

Suddenly, in the middle of her speech, there was a loud _pop_ and something dropped down from the sky.

It bopped Miranda on the head. She started screaming, and naturally, everyone else started screaming, too, and running away from her. Meanwhile, the thing that had hit Miranda rolled to a harmless stop in the grass.

"Oh, for pete's sake," Betsy muttered. She blew hard on the whistle again, three or four long blasts, until the others stopped running. "Stop acting like a bunch of namby-pambies! Look!" She pointed to the white lump on the ground. "It's just some crumpled-up paper!"

"But how did it get here?" one of Miranda's friends quavered.

"Maybe it fell from outer space!" Lizzie suggested.

Presently, the girls heard loud laughter and running feet. Cat clambered up onto Emma's backyard slide so she could see over the backyard fence.

She was frowning when she came back down. "I saw some of the boys from your brother's football club runnin' down the street," she reported. "They had their backs turned, but I recognized a couple of 'em. I'm pretty good at recognizin' the backs of people's heads."

Betsy scowled. "I bet that's from them."

Cautiously, the girls approached the missile. Sharon picked it up and smoothed it out. "There's writing on it!" she announced, and they clustered around to read what the writing said.

It was a message from the boys.

_We think that girls can't play football, but if you think that you can, we chalindge you to a showdown next-next Saturday, 3 PM at Fireman's Field. Be there or else…From the All-Boys Football Club_

Later that afternoon, Betsy barged into her brother's room, where she found him reading the latest _Superman_ comic book. She walked right up to him and flung down the "chalindge" from the boys. The wadded-up note bounced once off the carpet and landed with a _plop_ in the middle of Gerry's comic book.

"You tell your club that you dumb bozos spelled 'challenge' wrong," she snapped. (At least Tamsin had said it was spelled wrong.) "And you tell your club that my club is gonna take your stupid challenge — and we're gonna _win_!"


	6. Training

**Disclaimer:** The original Titans, Jack Lalanne and Charles Atlas belong to themselves. Emma Hoyt belongs to Disney and Ronnie's Ping-Pong ball gun to Dave Barry. Only Tamsin and her family are mine.

**Author's Notes:** This chapter is kind of short, but I had to cut it in the best possible place. More to come soon, I hope! Thanks to acrazychick and Sweet-Romantic for their reviews.

_Chapter Six — Training_

After accepting the boys' challenge, the girls' football practices became longer and tougher. Besides learning to do the plays that Betsy designed, they also did exercises to make themselves stronger. Practices now included things like pushups, jumping-jacks and running. Dumbbells disappeared from basements and large, heavy cans from pantries for use in weight-lifting. The girls baffled their parents by exercising along with Jack Lalanne on TV and some even went as far as to pillage their brothers' comic books for coupons and send away for Charles Atlas' body-building programs.

Betsy was glad to see that everyone in her club was working hard, and it seemed that their efforts were paying off. "Y'all did great," she praised them after practice in Emma's backyard one afternoon. "We still got work to do if we want to beat the boys next-next Saturday—"

"Why would we want to beat the boys?" Miranda whispered to the girl next to her.

Betsy glared at her and pressed on with her speech. "_If we want to beat the boys next Saturday,"_ she repeated more loudly, "but I think we're gettin' a lot better. At least, we're a lot better now than we were when we first started."

Some of the girls laughed.

"So I wanna say thank you to everyone. Let's keep workin' hard, keep practicin', and next-next Saturday, we'll _beat_ those boys!"

Betsy smiled, pleased, when the girls cheered and hollered and clapped their hands before getting ready to go home. It looked like they wanted to beat the boys, too. "Hey, Tamsin?" she called then. "C'mere a second, will you?"

Tamsin looked at her inquiringly as she finished re-tying her ponytail. She wiped a bit of sweat from her forehead before jogging over to where Betsy was standing. "What is it?"

"I just wanted to tell you that you're doin' a great job," Betsy said, speaking in a low voice so that the others wouldn't hear and get jealous (even though she was trying to say something nice to someone after every practice to keep their spirits up). "I know you're workin' hard, and that's great." She paused. "I guess what I'm _really_ tryin' to say is…I'm glad you're in the club."

Tamsin beamed. "Thanks, Betsy. I–I'm glad I joined, too. See you tomorrow."

* * *

Tamsin was still smiling on the way home from practice that day. It was really nice of Betsy to say that she was doing a good job. The younger girl was still kind of loudmouthed and hard to get along with when she was in a bad mood, but she was much nicer than Tamsin had once thought.

_I'm glad you're in the club,_ Betsy had said. Tamsin was glad she was in Betsy's club, too. Playing with the other girls was a lot of fun. There was always a lot of shrieking and giggling, and when someone did something right, it made everyone feel good.

_Pop!_

Suddenly, a white Ping-Pong ball came flying out of nowhere and hit her on the arm. "Ow!" she shouted, grabbing her arm and spinning around to try and find where the ball had come from.

Tamsin scowled when she saw a blond boy come out from behind a tree. He was carrying some kind of gun. "Was that yours?"

He blinked at her. "What?"

"The ball that hit me," she said, pointing to the grass where it had fallen. "Was it yours?"

He peered at the ball and nodded. "Yeah, that's mine. Thanks."

Tamsin put her hands on her hips. "Is that all you're going to say to me?"

"What else am I supposed to say?"

"How about _sorry_?" She rubbed her arm where the ball had hit her. Actually, it didn't hurt at all, but she had been very surprised.

"Oh. Sorry."

Tamsin frowned. He didn't sound like he meant it. In fact, he wasn't even looking at her; he was more interested in putting the Ping-Pong ball back into his gun.

Just then she remembered that the challenge from the boys' football club had been wrapped around a Ping-Pong ball that had dropped down from the sky. "You're one of them, aren't you?"

"One of who?"

"One of those boys in the football club."

He grinned. "Yeah, I am."

"Humph!" Tamsin stuck her nose in the air. "I wouldn't be so proud of it if I were you. You're not very good."

The grin disappeared from the boy's face. "How do you know that?"

"I just do, that's all." Of course, she didn't know for sure whether the boys' football club was any good, but naturally she wasn't going to say anything nice about the enemy.

He looked at her a bit more closely. "Don't tell me you're one of the girls in that other football club."

"What's it to you if I am?"

"Nothin'…" he answered with a shrug. Then he grinned again. "'xcept that we're gonna beat you next-next Saturday."

She scowled at him. "We'll see about that!" she snapped before turning on her heel and walking away.

* * *

The encounter with the weird boy from the boys' football club put a damper on Tamsin's good mood for the rest of the day. "I thought the weather report predicted fair weather for the entire week," Uncle Jon said that evening. "What's this storm cloud doing at our dinner table?"

"Is everything all right, darling?" Tamsin's mother asked.

Tamsin gave them her best disgruntled expression. "Boys can be so dumb."

Her mother laughed and gave Uncle Jon a teasing look. "They can indeed. What happened?"

"One of them shot at me with this toy gun he had, and he didn't say sorry. Well, he did," Tamsin amended, "but only after I told him to — _and_ he didn't sound like he meant it."

"Did he shoot at you for no reason?" Uncle Jon asked.

"I bet he did it just because I'm in the girls' football club."

"I take it there is a boys' football club?"

Tamsin nodded. "Yes, and they challenged us to a game next-next Saturday at Fireman's Field."

"A game?" her mother repeated. "A football game?"

"Yes," Tamsin said again. "We've been practicing all week."

"Do you think you have a chance of beating the boys' club?" Uncle Jon asked her. "Football is a rough sport."

"I know it," Tamsin answered, "but we've been working hard to make sure that we'll be as tough as the boys. Betsy — she's sort of the leader of our club — says we can take 'em."

"Do all the girls feel that way?" her mother asked.

"Oh, yes. Betsy's the coach and she's made up plays for us and we've been practicing them. She's also good at making speeches. I'm sure we'll be ready to beat the boys next-next Saturday."

The grown-ups exchanged looks that said they weren't too hot about the idea. "Girls can do anything boys can do, and beat them at it, too," Tamsin's mother said, "but, honey, I don't know about this."

"Those boys will want to win," Uncle Jon added, "and to do it, they'll play rough. You might get hurt."

"We're ready for that," Tamsin answered. "We're going to play rough, too."

* * *

That night, when Tamsin was asleep, her mother placed a call. "Hello, is this the Hoyt residence? …Florence, hello, this is Diana Lee…I'm fine, thank you, and you? …That's good to hear. Now, Florence, I've noticed that our daughters are spending a lot of time together and I think it's wonderful. I was just wondering if you knew anything about them belonging to a girls' football club…" 


End file.
